Last winter the SyFy Channel and Phillips partnered to bring Hue lighting to SyFy's 12 Monkey series. If you were running the SyFy Sync app, it would pick up audio cues from the TV and adjust your Hue lights to suit whatever was happening on screen. (Hue lights can change in both intensity and color and they are controlled wirelessly.)

It sounded like a pretty neat idea to me, but sadly I'm not a Hue owner so couldn't experience it first hand. I was interested enough that I almost ordered a starter set of Hue lights!

Today I am even more tempted because I just learned that Chariot, a game by Frima, can now control Hue lights when played on the Xbox One. Have a look at the video:

The video is pretty impressive but I wish I had more info on how it actually works. It seems like they have at least 6 Hue lights: 2 on the walls to the right, two behind the TV and 2 more on the floor on either side of the TV. They don't all light up in the same way or at the same time.

...Chariot is a popular couch co-op platformer with rich, vibrant colours and out-of-this-world graphics and environments. It is now able to control all the Philips Hue lights in the room to reflect in real time what is happening in the game. Different lights are connected together to create a unique ambiance with hundreds of colours for the ultimate immersion in the game universe. When enemies attack, Hue lights blink red. When colourful plants bloom, their colours are reflected in the room. From subtle shifts to sudden bursts, everything onscreen is reflected in a Hue-enabled space.

I'd love to hear from someone who has been able to test this system out! Amazon has a starter pack of two "Friends of Hue" Bloom lights and a Hue Bridge for $180. That's an awful lot to spend to enhance one game, but if more developers got on board with this idea then I think it'd be a worthwhile addition to a gaming room.